Welcome to The Never Ending Startup Podcast Episode 4- Curiosity and Professor Julius Sumner Miller- Startup Journey and Stories. Dr Jon reflects on the importance of curiosity in the startup journey and the use of methodology and philosophy to navigate the future. He recognise his own inherited traits which played out as a younger person in the form of OCD and claustrophobia and how they shaped his life path.
The Never Ending Startup Podcast: Lessons for Modern Startup Journey & Stories of Longevity
The podcast  shares Dr Jon’s insightful entrepreneurial journey, history and inspirations.

It includes interviews with ‘accelerator startups’ from The University of Newcastle’s I2N Innovation Hub about their journey and inspirations.

It also covers the state of Australia’s innovation ecology and lessons for new startups.

The podcast and book build a social and entrepreneurial framework for startup journey and  longevity.

In this episode we concentrate on the theme of curiosity and its importance in the startup journey of discovery.
This episode covers: Curiosity in the Startup Journey  (extract from upcoming book)
In this  episode we return to our audiobook preview which centres around the theme of curiosity, discovery and philosophy.

I cover the intense curiosity of Professor Julius Sumner Miller who brought the world into his science lab through his own tv show and the question ‘Why is it so’.

I pause to recognise my own inherited traits which played out as a younger person in the form of OCD and claustrophobia and how they shaped my life path.

Also how I was introduced to philosophy or ‘the love of wisdom’ through attending an elective class in my MBA in the early 1990s.

https://youtu.be/3s9psf01ldo?feature=shared
What is  The Never Ending Startup Podcast About?
The Never Ending Startup is the story of award winning researcher, writer, innovator, historian  and entrepreneur Dr Jonathan Drane and his journey through the world of  high rise construction, property development and then into  start up ventures, the genesis of which he discovered only recently, had its inception over half a century earlier.
Dr Jon’s Startup Journey and who inspired him
His first start up called Optimum Search was established in 1993 and still stands today with a deep quarter century history of entrepreneurial achievement and ‘catalyst research’ with some failure along the way, the latter being a central part of the DNA of its success.

The story starts in the midst of his post war 1950s upbringing as a hot housed adolescent who was introduced by his father to a strange mixture of  ‘chemistry sets’ , explorer Jacques Cousteau, physicist Professor Julius Sumner Miller and Australia’s Professor Harry Messel with the latter’s famous blue science book being in nearly every high school class room.
How History of Innovation guided Dr Jon’s startup journey and stories
In this way the story also  provides a lived ‘side history’ of Australia’s post war innovation path, its ‘lucky country’ label, and  its  subsequent ‘brain drain’ then independence and research initiatives from CSIRO to a modern innovation ecosystem.
Taking Dr Jon’s Lessons to the Modern Startup: Interviews with startups from UON I2N
Spurred by his attendance at innovation hubs and start up groups in the COVID era in  2022 and at the age of 67  Jonathan saw quite clearly what history can only reveal; that for the true start up, innovation is never ending and should not be seen as a single life defining achievement (whether good or bad) or a grab for wealth and celebrity.

The podcast includes interviews with modern startups including an exciting line up of interviews with ‘accelerator startups’ from the University of Newcastle’s Innovation Hub called I2N.

The accelerator startups cover important areas of our social, economic and environmental futures and they are used as themes for the interview related episodes.